Wessely: Authentizitätssignale

Abstract: This experimental text intertwines autobiographical notes, institutional observations, and theoretical reflections to examine the role of the first-person perspective (Ich) in contemporary cultural studies writing. Conceived as a formal experiment, it intentionally brings form and content into tension: the mode of writing itself becomes an enactment of the phenomena it seeks to analyse. The dated fragments move between the private and the institutional sphere, thereby performing the entanglements of academic labour, time economies, and personal narrative. Situating the current prominence of the »I« in relation to the rise of autofiction, self-branding logics, research evaluation regimes, and discourses on artificial intelligence, the text explores its ambivalent position between emancipatory tool and currency of visibility. It thus attempts to make perceptible, through its own literary and documentary strategies, the theoretical, practical and historical questions it addresses.